TMCOLDYCAR 
AND TMC NEW 

CHARLES E.jePFERSON 









"iiHSSuS^ 




Class ^J^A^(Z3'^ 

BooiJ42-Q4- 

Copyright N"- 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Old Year 

And the New 



BY 



CHARLES EDWARD JEFFERSON 

PASTOR OF BROADWAY TABERNACLE 
NEW YORK 




New York 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
PUBLISHERS 



COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 
PUBLISHED, SEPTEMBER, 1907 






)llsJHARYofCOf«GRFiSS 
Two Coules Received 

AUG 30 190^ 

C«pynft*t Entry 



COMPOSITION AND ELECTROTYPE PLATES BY 
D. B. UPDIKE, THE MERRYMOUNT PRESS, BOSTON 



The Old Year 



The Art of Forgetting 



The Art of Forgetting 

^^One thing I do^ forgetting the things which are 
behind^ and stretching forward to the things which 
are before^ I press on toward the goal.^"* Phil. hi. 13. 

THIS sentence is a golden clasp by 
means of which two years may 
be held together. 

The world is always interested in the 
lives of its successful men. In every land 
and time the man who has made for 
himself a place and a name has been an 
interesting, almost a fascinating, specta- 
cle. How did he do it ? That is the ques- 
tion which starts up in a thousand hearts. 
How did he climb to his position ? How 
did he win the victory ? How did he 
make his fortune and his name? How 
did he build the character that attracts 
and inspires ? It is interesting to see 
how the young men of each new gen- 
eration come flocking around the men 
of the preceding generation who have 

3 



The Old Year 



risen in the world, looking on them 
with curiosity and admiration, trying to 
grasp the secret of their success. 

Every now and then some new book 
appears, giving the biographies of fa- 
mous men or setting forth the maxims 
which were the governing principles 
of their lives. Almost every year some 
magazine brings out a symposium, in 
which a number of the leaders of our 
day tell the world what have been the 
influences which have gone to make 
them, and what have been the ruling 
ideas which have directed and shaped 
their lives. The world never grows 
weary of this sort of literature. We 
want to know everything possible about 
a man who has achieved success. Where 
was he educated ? What books did he 
read ? How did he work, and how did 
he play ? We are curious to know even 
what he ate, thinking that possibly if 
4 



The Art of Forgetting 

wc could eat some of the same mate- 
rial, we might reach an equal stature and 
develop a similar gift of power. There is 
no more interesting object on the earth 
than a genuinely successful man. There 
never has been a Samuel Johnson who 
has not had some Boswell tagging at 
his heels. Therehas never been a Goethe 
without some Eckermann drinking in 
his golden sentences and writing them 
down for the inspiration of succeeding 
generations. 

Now Paul is one of the confessedly 
successful men of history. If you should 
make out a list of twelve of the men of 
the last two thousand years who have 
indisputably succeeded, it would be ne- 
cessary to put his name in the list. There 
were all sorts ofsuccessful men in the first 
century, — merchants, rich men, gener- 
als, scholars, writers, politicians, states- 
men, men whose names sparkled and 

5 



The Old Year 



fascinated the eyes of their contempo- 
raries. But alas! how those glittering 
reputations have faded in the light of 
the suns of two thousand years, while 
the name of Paul shines brighter and 
brighter, like a fixed star in the firma- 
ment of the world. What was the se- 
cret of Paul's success ? Will he tell us ? 
Yes, he will. He is writing to his fa- 
vorite church, the church that has got- 
ten the deepest into his heart. To this 
church he will become more than usu- 
ally communicative. In a burst of con- 
fidence he will tell it just how he has 
succeeded in becoming what he is. 

This is what he says : "I keep right 
on forgetting, and I keep right on 
reaching. Those two words, 'forgetting' 
and 'reaching,' sum up the principles 
by which I live. I let the past go, and I 
keep reaching for the future; and, bre- 
thren, I ask you to follow my example." 
6 



The Art of Forgetting 

Let us think a little about the art of 
forgetting. Probably some one will say, 
"I would rather hear something about 
the art of remembering/' Everybody 
nowadays is complaining about the dif- 
ficulty of remembering. One not infre- 
quently hears some despondent soul ex- 
claim, "I can't remember anything at 
all.'* We hear so much and see so much 
and read so much that it makes no 
impression on the mind, and in a few 
short days all of it has vanished. 

And so our generation is looking after 
men who can teach it the art of re- 
membering. Every time a teacher rises, 
saying, " I know the secret of memory, 
and I can tell you how to hold on to 
things forever," great crowds go troop- 
ing out to meet that man, eager to be- 
come possessors of his secret. 

The Christian pulpit has been empha- 
sizing the duty of remembering. Most 

7 



The Old Year 



men are very heedless, very fickle, very 
careless and very forgetful, and the 
prophet of the Lord in every age has 
urged upon his hearers the duty of re- 
membering. Turn through the pages 
of your Bible and see how again and 
again the emphasis has been laid upon 
that one great word, ''''Remember,^' All 
the way from Moses down to the latest 
of the apostles we hear men saying, 
"O people, do not forget!" But that is 
only half of the message. Side by side 
with the exhortation to remember runs 
the exhortation to forget. Listen to the 
greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, in the 
forty-third chapter of the book which 
bears his name, urging upon his coun- 
trymen not to remember the former 
times, and to dismiss from their minds 
the things that have been. Listen to the 
language of Ezekiel, as with burning 
passion he pleads with his countrymen 
8 



The Art of Forgetting 

to remember Egypt no more. The fact 
is, both of these duties are of cardinal 
importance. There are some things to 
be remembered and some things to be 
forgotten, and it is the things which 
are to be forgotten about which men 
and women ought to think in the last 
days of a year which has grown old. 

The strength of man is limited. To 
each one of us God entrusts only a small 
amount of energy, and in order to suc- 
ceed it is necessary that we should use 
our possessions wisely. No man who 
wishes to achieve success can afford to 
do useless and weakening things. One 
of the most useless of all habits is that 
of dragging along too much of one's 
past. It handicaps a man in the race; 
it takes from him his strength. Many a 
man has been fatally crippled and para- 
lyzed simply by his propensity to carry 
along things with him which he ought 

9 



The Old Year 



to have let go. The one sentence above 
all the other sentences of the Scriptures 
which would have done him most good 
is this sentence from the pen of St. 
Paul: "Forgetting the things which 
are behind." What are some of these 
things? 

Blunders. We have all committed 
them. We have committed a lot of 
them. We have committed them from 
the beginning, and shall no doubt com- 
mit them to the end. As we look back 
across the years we can see that not 
one year has been free from mistakes. 
We made them when we were little 
children. On looking backward we can 
see them standing there looking at us, 
saying to us, "Yes, we belong to you." 
We committed them when we were 
young men and women, which was not 
surprising; and we committed them 
when we were fully grown, which is 

lO 



The Art of Forgetting 

somewhat more surprising. We have 
never been able to travel through a 
single year v^ithout taking steps which 
were false. On looking backward the 
temptation is very strong to say, "Oh, 
if I had taken the left road instead of 
the right, or if I had put my money 
here and not put it there, or if I had 
gotten an education, or a different kind 
of education, if I had done the thing 
which I finally did five years sooner, 
or if I had read the books at twenty 
which I read at forty, or if I had done 
some other thing than the thing which 
I did, how different my life would have 
been!'* Nothing is easier than to carry 
along with one the blunders of the 
past. And yet how foolish it is! Blun- 
ders are not such terrible things as we 
sometimes imagine. We have a right 
to commit them. God expects us to 
commit them. It is impossible not to 

1 1 



The Old Year 



commit them, because we arc creatures 
of limited insight and meagre know- 
ledge, and the air is full of dust, and we 
walk all the time in a mist, and it is im- 
possible that we should always choose 
the right road and always do the best 
possible thing. And so the greatest men 
as well as the weakest men have made 
their mistakes and have been guilty of 
terrible errors. The early settlers of New 
England were wise men, but, oh, the 
mistakes which they made! The Con- 
tinental Congress had in it as wise men 
as any congress ever had, but those men 
blundered right along all through the 
Revolutionary period. Our Civil War 
brought to the front the very sanest and 
greatest men of the nation, but from 
the beginning of the war to the end 
there was one long sickening record of 
blunders. 
It is surely impossible for a man to do 

12 



The Art of Forgetting 

anything in this world, or to be any- 
thing, without running the risk of mak- 
ing mistakes. Better a thousand times 
push forward and attempt what is dif- 
ficult and new and make a mistake at 
every step than never to do anything at 
all simply out of a craven fear that you 
may commit a blunder. Let us then 
forget our mistakes and remember them 
no more forever. Let us look upon 
them rather as blessings through which 
God has taught us how to live and 
work. Let us stand on top of them and 
reach out for higher things. How often 
you have heard people saying: "What 
a fool I was! What 2ifool\ was! What 
a fool I w<2j-/*'The next time you catch 
yourself saying that, change the tense 
of your verb. Do not say, " What a fool 
I was!'' but say this : "What a fool I 
am to keep everlastingly saying, ' What 
a fool I was!*'' A man never displays 

13 



The Old Year 



his folly more cohspicuously than when 
he is using up his strength and time in 
crying over milk that has been spilt. 

Let us forget also our losses. There 
are many kinds of them, only one of 
which can be here referred to, the loss 
of money. It will be well to select this 
one because it is the most common, 
and in some respects the most exas- 
perating and distressing. There are very 
few experiences in life which have 
a more depressing influence upon the 
human mind than the loss of money, 
and the depression is all the greater 
when the sum of money lost is large, 
and it is greater still if the man who 
loses the money is past middle life. A 
man can endure with equanimity things 
at forty which prostrate him utterly at 
sixty. But this distressing experience 
is one of the most common of all the 
experiences which come to mortals in 
14 



The Art of Forgetting 

this world. It is impossible to find any- 
where a thousand people among whom 
there are not at least a hundred who 
have lost money either through their 
own foolishness or through the rascal- 
ity of others. When this loss comes to 
a man his temptation is to sit down 
and moan. He broods over his loss un- 
til the whole sky is shadowed. He cries 
out even in his sleep. He awakens in 
the morning to find all the sky drab. 
His loss unnerves him completely. He 
bewails his terrible misfortune, look- 
ing with eyes absolutely hopeless into 
a future that seems absolutely black. 
He may grieve himself into his grave. 
Now it is a sad thing to lose money, 
but it is a still sadder thing for one to 
lose his good sense. What is the sense 
in grieving over a thing that has gone, 
and gone irretrievably ? If the money 
has been lost, moaning over the loss of 

IS 



The Old Year 



it will not bring it back. No man has 
ever made money by sighing. If a man 
could get his hand on the money sim- 
ply by reaching into the past, that 
would be a sensible thing to do; but 
when the man knows that he cannot 
possibly get his hand on the money, 
and can grasp nothing but a shadow, 
and that shadow a shadow with poison 
in it, which will shrivel and blast his 
soul, how foolish it is for him to keep 
grasping at that shadow! Let him turn 
his back on the past and say to him- 
self: "I will let it go. I will remem- 
ber it no more forever. I will reach 
forward now to the things that lie be- 
fore me." 

Injuries ought also to be forgotten. 
We cannot get through life without 
being wounded. Sooner or later some- 
body hurts us. Some hurt us uninten- 
tionally, some hurt us maliciously and 
i6 



The Art of Forgetting I 

on purpose. Somebody lies about us be- 
cause he is a liar, and somebody tries | 
to tell the truth about us, but does not 
succeed. He misrepresents us because 
he cannot understand us. Somebody 
insults us, and again and again we are 
slighted. Somebody works against us, 
or tries to undermine us, or endeavors 
to tarnish our name or to weaken our 
influence. We are opposed by those 
who do not hesitate to do things which 
are tricky and mean. What shall we 
do with all these insults, these slights, 
these offences? Why not forget them? 
Why not cast them behind one's back 
and remember them no more forever? 
If a man broods over them and carries 
them along with him, he is using up 
his strength needlessly. A man is al- 
ways in danger if he broods over a 
wrong that has been done him. A single 
resentment weighs more than a ton of 

'7 



The Old Year 



lead. It is a millstone around a man*s 
neck that will drown him in the depths 
of the sea. 

Hate is the heaviest thing in God's 
universe, because it is most unlike the 
disposition of God. You cannot carry 
any of it along with you without using 
up your strength. How foolish, there- 
fore, to carry even a little of it from 
one year into another! Why not throw 
it behind your back on the last day of 
the year? Why not wash the slate clean ? 
You have got a great score of offences 
— well, wash the whole score out and 
begin all over again. A man is not master 
of himself, is not free to do his best work, 
unless he can stand on his feet and say, 
"There is not a soul upon the earth 
against whom I would lift my finger 
with a desire to hurt him, nor is there a 
single human being whom I have either 
the time or the disposition to hate." 
i8 



The Art of Forgetting 

But what shall we say about our sins? 
Can these also be forgotten? Here we 
come to a very difficult question, for a 
sin is far different from a mistake or a 
blunder. We feel, and we feel rightly, 
that it has immeasurable significance, 
that it is an offence against the eternal 
God. How can we forget it, therefore, 
and how can God forget it? Certainly 
we cannot forget our sins. Thus have 
spoken many conscientious souls, and 
so they have remembered their sins, 
brooded over them, wept over them, 
brought them again and again and again 
to God, asking for His forgiveness. But 
this is wrong. We know it is wrong 
because of the results to which it leads. 
If a man broods over his sins he becomes 
morbid, and a morbid man is always 
weak. The morbidness may degener- 
ate into remorse, and the remorse may 
pass on into insanity. Thousands of 

19 



The Old Year 



human beings have become insane be- 
cause they were unwilling to forget 
their sins. 

It is at this point that the Christian 
religion comes to help us. When left 
to ourselves we feel that we must carry 
our sins with us, there is no escape from 
them. But Christianity says, "Yes, you 
may cast even these behind your back, 
and remember them no more forever." 
That is what God does. He casts them 
behind His back. He buries them in 
the depths of the sea. He washes out 
the crimson until it is all white, even 
white as snow. That is the supreme 
message of the religion of Jesus Christ. 
Even sin is dissolved in the alchemy of 
the Infinite Love. 

"y^/ the cross, at the cross, where I first saw the light, 
And the burden of my heart rolled away. 
It was there by faith I received my sight. 
And now I am happy all the day^^ 

20 



The Art of Forgetting 

Let the cross of Christ speak to you 
on the last day of the year. Let it tell 
you to remember your sins no more. 
We despise the message that has come 
to us through Jesus when we bring our 
old sins to God. Nothing but a new 
sin can be rightfully brought to Him. 
The old sins committed years ago look 
heinous in the light of advancing years, 
but we ought not to gather these up 
and bring them again and again to God. 
What would you men who are fathers 
think if your boy or girl should come 
to you day after day, saying, "Will 
you please forgive me for that wrong 
thing which I did," when you had al- 
ready forgiven it long ago and had ban- 
ished it from your mind ? We do not 
believe what God has told us in Jesus 
Christ, His Son, when we bring back 
our old sins to Him. Let then the sins 
committed during this last year lie be- 

21 



The Old Year 



hind us. Let us say that we will remem- 
ber them no more. 

But there are good things also which 
we must learn how to forget. Victo- 
ries must be forgotten; the successes 
must be cast behind our back. Many 
a man has been ruined simply because 
he remembered too well his triumphs. 
He goes into art and succeeds, or he 
goes into business and is prosperous, 
and he immediately begins to talk about 
his successes, about his prosperity. 
He remembers too well, and the re- 
sult is he makes no progress. Goethe 
has somewhere said that whenever a 
man does a really fine thing the world 
conspires to keep him from doing it 
again. Yes, not only does the world 
conspire, but a man's own soul enters 
into the conspiracy. He is tempted to 
sit down with his success and muse 
over it and exult over it. In that hour 

22 



The Art of Forgetting 

of his exultation his soul begins to 
die. His ship, which proudly rode the 
waves, has its prow turned toward the 
open sea, but the old rope of retrospec- 
tion ties it to the dock, and there it 
stands, day after day rising and falling 
with the tide, while other men, braver 
men with no overfondness for the past, 
sail out and on toward distant harbors, 
in which they find golden treasures 
which might have been won by the 
other man if he had not remembered 
too well that he had succeeded. 

The life of many a man has been 
blasted because of early successes. How 
true this is in regard to families. It is 
known to every man familiar with Ame- 
rican history that it is very seldom that 
a family amounts to anything for more 
than three generations. The first gen- 
eration starts poor: there is nothing be- 
hind it and therefore there is no temp- 

23 



The Old Year 



tation to look backward, and the boys 
reach forward to the things that are 
ahead, and by reaching forward they 
succeed and make themselves a name 
anda fortune. The secondgeneration,in- 
heriting these treasures, increases them, 
expanding the bounds of the family in- 
fluence, giving new lustre to the name. 
And then the third generation begins 
to look backward. It begins to talk about 
"our family, our name, our position, 
our influence," — and that moment the 
family begins to decay. 

The same thing is true of churches. 
Very rarely a church remains prosper- 
ous more than one generation. A church 
is one of the most human of all insti- 
tutions. It seems well-nigh impossible 
to keep Christians from becoming vain- 
glorious and proud. Church prosperity 
has a subtle poison in it which seems 
to paralyze the heart. Men begin to 
24 



The Art of Forgetting 

talk about "our church" — what it did, 
how much money it gave, what great 
congregations it had. And the moment 
the members of a church begin to glory 
in the successes of the past it enters upon 
a stage of decline. The church of God 
has no business with the past. It may 
glance hastily backward now and then 
simply to confirm its faith in God, but 
let it grapple in season and out of season 
with the present, and reach boldly out 
toward the future. 

Many persons have a tendency in the 
closing days of a year to fall into a pen- 
sive and melancholy mood. Glancing 
backward makes them sad. They think 
ofthe things they have done which they 
ought not to have done, they brood over 
the things they have not done which 
they ought to have done. This tendency 
to moody retrospection grows upon us 
as we advance in life. Youth is always 

25 



The Old Year 



looking forward. The past has little 
fascination for it; the great things are 
still to come. But by and by the day 
arrives on which a man feels that the 
larger part of life lies behind him. This 
is a great day in a man's life, and he 
is not likely to forget it. The habit of 
retrospection begins to grow upon him, 
and he dwells more and more upon 
the things which have been. Traveling 
down the western slope of the hill with 
the sun all red in the western sky, he 
dreams fond dreams of childhood and 
of the glowing years long gone. He 
thinks of the happy years of boyhood, 
and what it meant then to be alive. He 
thinks of what he was and what he did 
when, a young man full of fire and vigor, 
he started on his career. He remembers 
what he was in middle life, when his 
eye was undimmed and his natural force 
was unabated, when he could do a full 
26 



The Art of Forgetting 

man's work and still be fresh when even- 
ing came. 

But this is not a wholesome mood 
into which to fall. We cannot bring 
youth back again, nor middle life after 
we once have passed it. The Garden of 
Eden, with its fragrance and its shade, 
lies at the beginning, and to it we can- 
not return. Our faces are in the other 
direction. We are moving toward the 
city of God. This then is the message 
for all people who have passed middle 
life, and especially for those whofeel that 
the earthly journey is well-nigh com- 
pleted. Your life is yet ahead of you. No 
matter how old you are, your life is yet 
to come; your real life, your full life, 
your rich life, — all this lies beyondyou. 
No matter what successes you have won, 
your real success is yet to be achieved. 
No matter what joys you have tasted, 
the real raptures are still ahead of you. 

27 



The Old Year 



Why then need you grieve about 
your blunders ? Let them rise like moun- 
tains behind your back. How can your 
blunders hurt you when your life is still 
ahead of you? Let your losses rise in dis- 
mal heaps; you will smile at the great- 
est of them a hundred years from now. 
The insults and the injuries, thewrongs 
which have been done you, — why not 
turn your back upon them? No man has 
ever hurt you; no man can ever hurt 
you. The only wounds which you bear 
in your soul are the wounds inflicted by 
yourself. All your enemies have failed, 
and your life is still ahead of you. Your 
sins — even these must be cast behind 
you. You have grieved that you were 
ever guilty of them, but now let your 
grief flow no more. God has said, "I 
will cast them behind my back, and re- 
member them no more." Believe Him! 
He is good enough to do just that. 
28 



The Art of Forgetting 

Take Him at His word and remember 
this, — that no matter what your sins 
have been, your life is still ahead of 
you. 

It is beautiful to think that the year 
now passing is indeed the year of our 
Lord. It is numbered from His birth, 
and it is entrusted with a message from 
His heart. If we could hear it speaking 
we could hear it saying, " Forget the 
things that lie behind, and reach for- 
ward to the things that are before, for 
you shall see greater things than any 
which your eyes have yet beheld.'' We 
have seen wonderful things this last 
year, but we shall see greater things in 
the year that is coming. We shall have 
a wider apprehension of the divine 
mercy and a fuller realization of the 
divine power. The best things are al- 
ways yet to come. At the river Jor- 
dan, when the apostles stood spellbound 

29 



. The Old Year 



by certain manifestations which awed 
them, Christ said to them, "You shall 
see greater things than these." All the 
way along His career they marveled at 
Him, saying, " We have never seen it 
after this fashion;" and His reply was, 
"You shall see greater things than 
these." 

Let us hear the old year saying to us 
the very words which Jesus spoke, and 
speaks: "You shall see greater things 
than these." This is true for all of us, but 
for none of us is it so sublimely, glori- 
ously true as for those of us for whom 
this comingyear shall be our last. When 
this corruption shall have put on incor- 
ruption and this mortality shall have put 
on immortality, then and not till then 
shall we grasp the full and thrilling sig- 
nificance of Jesus' words, " You shall see 
greater things than these." 



30 



The New Year 



The Art of Reaching 



The Art of Reaching 

^^ Stretching forward to the things which are beforeP 
Phil. hi. 13. 

IN order to enter into the power of 
this language we must catch the 
picture which is before St. Paul's eye. 
Like all other minds of the first order, 
Paul moves easily and naturally through 
the realm of images and analogies. He 
is as full of figures as a poet is. In this 
respect Jesus and Paul were alike. Jesus 
is always picturesque. He cannot speak 
without painting a picture. But Jesus 
and Paul, in their use of illustrations, 
were unlike in one point: Jesus drew 
His pictures largely from nature. In the 
open-air life of Palestine He and the 
people w^ere constantly in contact with 
the natural world, and the sights and 
the sounds of the fields passed easily 
into His discourses. He weaves into His 
paragraphs the blossoms of the spring 



The New Year 



and the scent of the grass, and as we 
follow Him along the bypaths of His 
thought we can feel the wind blowing 
on our cheeks and now and then can 
catch glimpses of the sea. But St. Paul 
apparently cares little for nature; it 
makes slight impression upon him. He 
is interested in the world of human 
thought and human passion and human 
activity. It is the world of man from 
which he brings the images by means 
of which he will express the great ideas 
which God has anointed him to teach. 
One of the most conspicuous features 
of the world in which Paul lived was 
athleticism. We know something about 
it even in our day, for it has become a 
striking phenomenon of our time, and 
a school does not count itself complete 
without a gymnasium, and a university 
is of all universities most wretched un- 
less it has a stadium. There are thou- 
34 



The Art of Reaching 

sands of men who are interested in no 
other literature than in the literature 
of athletic contests, and to not a few 
athleticism has assumed the dignity 
and the importance of a religion. But 
in all this we cannot reach the pitch of 
enthusiasm which prevailed in the Gre- 
cian world of the first century. Where- 
cver the Greeks had gone they had 
carried with them their abounding in- 
terest in the discipline of the body and 
in the development of physical prow- 
ess. 

The supreme spectacle on this earth 
to the pious Jew was the sacrifices in 
the temple, and the supreme spectacle 
to the Roman was the return of a victo- 
rious general, bringing back with him 
the trophies of the latest war; but the 
supreme spectacle to a Greek was the 
Isthmian games, and of all the Isthmian 
games which thrilled the Grecian blood 

35 



The New Year 



the foot-race was the most important. 
The man who won this race made for 
himselfa name which extended through 
the Grecian world. These contests 
brought together people from all direc- 
tions. The most distinguished citizens 
presided as judges, there were throngs 
of applauding spectators, some illustri- 
ous poet wrote a poem in honor of the 
victor, and the memory of his triumph 
was handed down from generation to 
generation as a rich legacy. Everybody, 
therefore, to whom Paul preached was 
familiar with the Isthmian games. The 
stadium and the gymnasium were 
stamped indelibly upon the eye. Every- 
body understood the discipline and the 
sacrifices and the tremendous exertion 
of a racer, and Paul, looking on it all, 
said: "That is my idea of a Christian; 
that is precisely what a Christian ought 
to be and do. He ought to discipline 



The Art of Reaching 

himself; he ought to concentrate his 
energies; he ought to keep his eye upon 
the goal, remembering that the prize 
is not a fading garland, but a crown of 
righteousness laid up by God for all 
who love Him." 

What new life is poured into this sen- 
tence when it is read in the glow of an 
athlete's face, and when we can hear 
running through its music the labored 
panting of the athlete's breath! "For- 
getting the things which are behind," 
— what new significance that possesses 
when we think of what a runner does! 
He kicks out the earth from under him 
as he goes, caring nothing for the dis- 
tance already passed. His eye is on the 
distance yet to cover. What does he 
care for the spectators whom he has 
left behind him? One of them may 
have smiled superciliously at him, an- 
other may have jeered at him, here and 

37 



The New Year 



there may have been a hiss. But for all 
these things he cares nothing, for his 
eye is on the goal. " Forgetting those 
things which are behind, and reach- 
ing forth unto those things which are 
before," — that is the way the old ver- 
sion put it, but the English word 
"reaching" does not do justice to the 
Greek. Our revisers have substituted 
a stronger word: it is "stretching." 
What is stretching but reaching raised 
to a higher power? Stretching is reach- 
ing with all the muscles tensed. It is a 
long Greek word which St. Paul uses. 
He uses it nowhere else in any of his 
letters. It contains fourteen letters. He 
takes two Greek prepositions and welds 
them together in order to express what 
his mind sees and his heart feels. It is 
a stretch that he has in mind, — a stretch 
forward and a stretch after: it is a pur- 
poseful stretching. The man is reach- 

38 



The Art of Reaching 



ing forward with his eye upon a prize, 
and the eye draws the whole body after 
it. "That/* he says, "is my idea of a 
Christian. It is in that spirit that I am 
running, and, brethren, I ask you to fol- 
low my example.'' 

This is a good picture to hang up 
along with your calendar, to be looked 
at every day through the year. What a 
contrast between that picture and the 
picture of the ordinary Christian as we 
know him nowadays! How lethargic 
the average Christian is! What inertia 
there is in him! How free from enthu- 
siasm! How he loiters! How he daw- 
dles! How he goes back and measures 
the distance already covered! How he 
turns to the right and to the left, paying 
attention now to his friends and now to 
his foes! The average Christian is not 
running: that constitutes the tragedy 
of modern Christendom. We have mil- 

39 



The New Year 



lions of professing Christians, but alas! 
how few of them are running the race. 
Let us hang the picture up then along 
with the calendar for the New Year, 
and when the old lassitude begins to 
steal over us and we fall into a desul- 
tory and loitering mood, let us look up 
at the picture of the athlete running, 
and through him God will speak unto 
our souls. 

Man was made to reach. He is a reach- 
ing animal. No other creature on the 
earth reaches as does he. The little child 
shows the genius of our human nature 
almost from the very start. Hold the 
baby tight or he will wriggle himself 
out of your arms upon the floor. A lit- 
tle child is always reaching, striving to 
get hold of the things that lie beyond 
him. His favorite direction is upward. 
He will take hold of anything which 
he can get his little hands upon and 
40 



The Art of Reaching 

pull ft down if he can. As soon as he be- 
gins to speak his language also reaches. 
His first sentences are questions; and 
what are questions but reachings of the 
mind? Before he was able to speak he 
had manifested his nature in the move- 
ments of his arms, and as soon as the 
mind develops, the mind reaches also 
for the things that are before. As soon 
as he understands one thing, it has no 
further interest for him ; he goes on and 
takes up another. A child adopts St. 
PauTsprinciplei^Forgettingthe things 
that are behind, I stretch forward to the 
things that are before.'' There is eter- 
nal significance in the fact that Jesus 
did not put a man in the midst of his 
disciples, saying, "This is what you 
ought to be.'' He set in the midst a 
child, saying, "Unless you become as 
alittle child, you cannot enter the king- 
dom." 

41 



The New Year 



And if it was a little child upon 
whose head Jesus pronounced the bless- 
ing, it was upon the head of the Phari- 
sees that he poured his fiercest con- 
demnation. What was the matter with 
the Pharisee that Jesus opposed him 
so? What was wrong with this man 
that the Master was always condemn- 
ing him? He was not a murderer, 
he was not a thief, he was not a lib- 
ertine, he was not a non-churchgoer. 
The most respectable people in all 
Palestine were Pharisees, and yet Jesus 
was always launching his thunderbolts 
against the Pharisees. What was the 
matter with the Pharisee ? He was the 
one man in Palestine who had ceased 
to reach. He had attained his height 
and wanted to grow no taller; he had 
reached the goal and wanted to advance 
no further. That was the Pharisee, and 
that was the man for whom Jesus had 
42 



The Art of Reaching 

no hope. Two men went up into the 
temple to pray, the one a Pharisee and 
the other a Publican; and the Phari- 
see folded his arms in great self-com- 
placency and ran over the list of his 
achievements. There you have the por- 
trait of the Pharisee in the first cen- 
tury and in the twentieth. He is the 
man who is satisfied: he prides himself 
upon his attainments; he thanks God 
that he has gotten further than his 
neighbors. But over in the corner there 
is a poor wretch who simply reaches 
up his soul to heaven, saying : " Be mer- 
ciful ! be merciful ! be merciful to me ! " 
And the Son of God says that that 
man in the corner, who is reaching, 
is the man who is pleasing unto God. 
This is a good thing to remember in 
the first days of a new year, for the past 
is likely to leave us in one of two con- 
ditions, — in the mood of despondency 

43 



The New Year 



or in the mood of complacency. We 
are depressed by the past's failures and 
sorrows, or we are elated by the things 
which we have done, proud of the pro- 
gress we have made. We always make 
too much of the past when we allow 
it to render us self-complacent. Forget- 
ting the things that are behind, let us 
reach. If we should go up and down 
the world to-day and pick out the most 
promising people, the people whom 
we should say ought to stand in the 
first place, we should pick out the men 
of attainments, men who have built up 
a large number of virtues and graces, 
men who have achieved large and no- 
ble things. These men, we would say, 
are the men with whom God is best 
pleased and of whom largest things 
may be expected. But the Son of God, 
if He should move up and down our 
world, would not pick out the men of 
44 



The Art of Reaching 

attainment, but the men of aspiration. 

For the man who aspires there is more 
hope than there is for him who has at- 
tained. It is not what we have already 
achieved, but what we want to achieve, 
that fixes our place in the estimation 
of the Eternal. It is not what we have 
accomplished, but what we desire, that 
gives us our rank in the scale of being. 
The supreme question, therefore, at the 
beginning of the year is not, "What 
have you attained?'* but, "How far are 
you reaching?'* The future belongs to 
the man who aspires. There is hope for 
every one who is reaching. " Unless 
above himself he can erect himself, how 
poor a thing is man.'' And the only man 
in the world who is pitiably and hope- 
lessly poor is the man who has no 
desire to reach forward to the things 
which are in front of him. 

If a man does not reach, retribution 

45 



The New Year 



begins at once its awful work. The 
doctrine of evolution has a great deal 
to suggest to us at this point. The lat- 
est science assures us that capacity is 
never developed except under pres- 
sure; only those parts of our being un- 
fold which are subject to a great strain. 
This has been true from the beginning, 
and only those forms of life have suc- 
ceeded in climbing the long and dif- 
ficult ascent which have been able to 
sustain the strain and the pressure. 
Whatsoever parts of our nature are not 
subject to this strain gradually fail. Why 
is it we cannot see so far as a man 
who lived in the stone age? We have 
advanced in a thousand things, but not 
in the power of seeing. It is because 
we have not stretched our eyes as the 
man in the woods does. Why do we 
not hear so keenly as the savage? It is 
because we do not stretch our sense of 

46 



The Art of Reaching 

hearing. How does it happen that we 
have not the sense of direction in any- 
such measure as it is possessed by the 
wild man in the forest? It is because 
it is not used. It is only the faculty 
that is stretched which is built up and 
strengthened; the faculty with which 
we do not reach is the faculty that dis- 
integrates and finally disappears. 

Charles Darwin, one of the greatest 
scientists of the last century, grieved in 
his later years that he had lost his ap- 
preciation for poetry and music and art. 
As a young man he had enjoyed all 
of these, but for years he stretched his 
mind in other directions, and at the 
close of his career he had lost his ap- 
preciation for the high things of the 
spirit. If history makes anything clear, 
it makes it clear that the prizes have 
always come to the men and the na- 
tions which have reached. There was- 

47 



The New Year 



a time in history when little Holland 
led the world in manufactures, in art, 
and in commerce. How could this lit- 
tle nation achieve such an immortal 
renown? How did it become strong 
enough to defy Philip H of Spain, and 
take its place at the head of the proces- 
sion of the nationsof the world? It did it 
all by reaching. No other man in Europe 
reached as did the Dutchman. He 
stretched forward over the western edge 
of Europe and picked up the bottom 
of the sea, and on that built his home, 
and having done that he was ready to 
lead the world.. 

Still another illustration is the New 
Englander. Through the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries there were many 
colonies established all along the east- 
ern coast of North and South America, 
— and most of them came to nothing. 
Those that most rapidly disintegrated 
48 



The Art of Reaching 

were those in South America and on 
the coast of FloridaandofCentral Ame- 
rica and of Mexico, where the condi- 
tions were most favorable and where 
the food dropped from the trees into 
the mouths of men. Most of these colo- 
nies languishedandshriveledand finally- 
died, whereas the colonies plantedalong 
the shores of New England, where the 
soil was rocky and the skies were gray, 
grew and flourished and gave lustre to 
the New World. And why did the bless- 
ing come to the New Englander? Sim- 
ply because he reached. He was always 
reaching. By his incessant reaching he 
put iron into his blood and fire into his 
heart, and built up for himself a char- 
acter which has been one of the domi- 
nating factors in the development of 
America. Although God has spread a 
layer of Irishmen over New England, 
and over thelrishmen a layer of French 

49 



The New Year 



Canadians, and over the French Cana- 
dians a layer of Italians and Poles, nev- 
ertheless New England it is to-day, and 
New England it will forever be, be- 
cause the New Englander of the seven- 
teenth century by stretching built up a 
character and a temper able to lift un- 
counted generations to its noble stand- 
ards and high ideals. 

The man who reaches is the one man 
who has hope of salvation. The man who 
does not reach is the man who is doomed. 
What do you think is the most danger- 
ous period in human life ? The wise men 
have never yet been able to agree. There 
are those who have contended that the 
crucial period is that which elapses be- 
tween thirteen and seventeen, and that 
if a human being can pass through that 
period with body sound and mind sane 
and spirit unpolluted, the future is se- 
cure. Others have contended that the 

50 



The Art of Reaching 

danger period is in the early twenties, 
when the blood is hottest and the world 
and the flesh are the most dazzling and 
fascinating. Others have said that it is 
in the later forties, when a man has 
reached the top of the hill and knows 
it, and realizes that henceforth he must 
look into the west. Others have said that 
it is in the early sixties, — when Ralph 
Waldo Emerson said, "It is time to be 
old, to take in sail.*' There are others 
who claim that a man does not reach the 
danger zone until he has passed three- 
score and ten. 

The fact remains that all periods of 
our earthly life are dangerous. There 
are perils all the way. A man is never 
safe, no matter how old he is. That 
was a stroke of genius in John Bunyan 
which led him to paint a path leading 
down to hell starting near the gate of 
heaven. There are two periods which 

51 



The New Year 



may be regarded as especially danger- 
ous. The first is the period immediately 
succeeding a man's coming out of col- 
lege. Through the college year a man 
is obliged to reach. He lives in a world 
of bookstand great ideals are always be- 
fore his eyes. Unless he is absolutely in- 
corrigible and a fool, he reaches forward 
^ to the things that lie before. But on leav- 

ing college he drops his books, he is not 
subject to the same pressure, the ideals 
are not held so closely before his eyes. 
It is in this period that he is likely to 
relax his efforts after the higher life and 
to fall into the current of the world. 
Phillips Brooks always contended that 
the most critical years in a man's life 
were the five years after leaving college, 
and one of the most distinguished physi- 
cians of our generation in his latest book 
has called attention in solemn words to 
the perils of this same period. One rea- 



5^ 



The Art of Reaching 

son why our American cities are in the 
deplorable condition in which they find 
themselves is because thousands of our 
college graduates go to pieces in these 
five critical and crucial years. 

The other period' which is found to 
be preeminently dangerous is the pe- 
riod which follows the attainment of 
a man's ambition. A man starts out to 
do a certain thing in this world, and 
he does it. He makes his fortune, he 
achieves his success, he does his work, — 
and then what a temptation it is to say, 
"Now I will take things easy; I will 
make myself comfortable!" In that mo- 
ment a soul begins to enter upon the 
road that leads down to death. How 
often it has been noted that men who 
give up their business go rapidly to 
pieces physically. We have come al- 
most to be afraid of having a man retire 
from business, feeling that after that 

53 



The New Year 



he cannot live long. What is the ex- 
planation for this? It is the paradox of 
life that pressure enables a man to stand 
a strain, keeps him alive. Take off the 
pressure and reduce the strain and you 
hasten a man's death. Therefore a man 
ought never to retire from business un- 
less he intends to go into some other 
business. There are different kinds of 
business, and all of them require a deal 
of reaching. 

Let us hope the time will come when 
a larger number of our American busi- 
ness men will retire at the age of sixty, 
or even earlier, in order to devote the 
remaining years of their life to those 
large social and religious questions 
which have received in the last fifty 
years but scant attention. Our men 
have poured their best blood and their 
finest energy into the development of 
the banking system and the commer- 

54 



The Art of Reaching 

cial system and the industrial system, 
and have left almost untouched those 
great problems of social and moral re- 
construction which must be grappled 
with by the men of the coming gener- 
ation. 

It is perfectly safe for a man to retire 
from the business of making money 
if he will go into this higher business 
of setting the world straight. Instead of 
taking things easy and doing as we please 
as we get older, we ought to take the 
law of Christ with new enthusiasm to 
our heart and crucify the flesh. That law 
is not intended only for young men of 
twenty : it is for men over sixty and over 
seventy. Crucify the flesh, sacrifice your- 
self, do the thing that you do not want 
to do, do not surrender to your moods, 
but fight them, — only thus is it that 
you can keep alive. And here again we 
can get a lesson from the race-track. The 

LOfC. 55 



The New Year 



runner does not do his best work at the 
first of the course : he saves himself a lit- 
tle, he is careful not to overdo. He will 
get in his best work in the last hundred 
yards. That is the way in which we ought 
to live. The last years of our life ought 
to be the best, the fullest of self-sacri- 
fice, the richest in obedience to God. 
There is something thrilling in the fact 
that Saul of Tarsus used the figure of 
the runner as the last figure which he 
ever used. When a prisoner in the city 
of Rome, with the flash of the heads- 
man's sword in his eyes, he wrote these 
words to his dearest friend: "I have 
finished the course." 

What is it now that Paul is running 
after? He is reaching forward after 
something. What is the prize ? He has 
already told us. He wants to be the 
man that God had in mind when Paul 
was created. He feels that Christ has 
S6 



The Art of Reaching 

laid His hand on him, and he wants to 
be the man that Christ had in mind. 
That was the supreme ambition of his 
life, that was the prize for which he 
was running with all his might. What 
a thrilling ambition! If that does not 
bring out the energies of the soul, what 
will ? Think how men run for lesser 
prizes. They are running furiously all 
around us. The world is crowded with 
runners racing for the prize. They are 
running after money, after fame, after 
position, — and no sacrifice is too great 
to make, no self-discipline is too severe. 
Men will do anything, subject them- 
selves to any strain, in order to win the 
prize. Alas ! how often they sacrifice the 
best things in this world in order to reach 
the goal. 

And what are these prizes ? Garlands 
of pine, perishable garlands, all of them. 
What is wealth ? A fading garland. 

57 



The New Year 



What is position? A garland that is 
fresh but for a day. What is fame ? A 
garland that soon wilts. And yet men 
run with every nerve tensed and every 
sinew stretched in order that they may 
win them. Oh, runners, stop and listen! 
The garland that you are after is a fading 
one. Why don't you run for the garland 
that is immortal ? 

But even in this running for fading 
garlands there is something that stirs 
the blood. It is magnificent, even if it 
is tragic. Better expend one's energy 
in running for a goal, no matter what 
it is, than to idle away one's life on a 
bench in the sun. But if men will run 
so after fading garlands, how ought we 
to run who have been laid hold of by 
Christ ? He has seized us; His hand has 
been upon us. He has a purpose. There 
is a divine plan. We were laid hold of 
to carry out the plan. He laid His hand 

S8 



The Art of Reaching 

upon us in our parents, in our grand- 
father and grandmother, in the Chris- 
tian men and women who lived their 
lives before we were born. To be the 
man that He expected us to be and do 
the work which He planned — that is 
the goal toward which we ought to run 
with every nerve alive. 

That is a lovely little poem of the 
poet Longfellow, entitled Excelsior, A 
young man starts out at the foot of the 
Alps to make his upward way, bear- 
ing a banner on which is inscribed the 
single word, "Excelsior.'* Here and 
there voices beg him to tarry awhile. 
The temptations become more and 
more seductive as he reaches the upper 
slopes, but turning a deaf ear to all, the 
youth goes bravely upward bearing his 
banner "Excelsior." That is the spirit 
in which every soul ought to live. We 
are going up the mountain, and the 

59 



The New Year 



word that ought to burn in the heart is 
"Excelsior/' Higher still, and higher! 
Higher always, and still higher! until 
at last the words are frozen on our lips 
in the driving storm of the last day, 
and we pass into the world where the 
King is, and where our blessedness will 
be unending because we shall grow for- 
ever and ever. Ours should be the spirit 
of Columbus: 

Behind him lay the gray Azores^ 

Behind the Gates of Hercules; 
Before him not the ghost of shore Sy 

Before him only shoreless seas. 
The good mate said: ^^Now must we pray^ 

For lo ! the very stars are gone. 
Brave Admiral^ speak; what shall I say?" 

" IVhyy say, * Sail on I sail on ! and on / '" 

^^Afy men grow mutinous day by day; 

My men grow ghastly wan and weak^^ 
The stout mate thought of home; a spray 
Of salt wave washed his swarthy cheek. 



60 



The Art of Reaching 

" What shall I say, brave Admiral, say, 
If we sight naught but seas at dawn? 

^^Why, you shall say at break of day, 

^ Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on! ^^^ 



They sailed and sailed, as winds might blow, 

Until at last the blanched mate said: 
" IVhy, now not even God would know 

Should I and all my men fall dead. 
These very winds forget their way. 

For God from these dread seas is gone. 
Now speak, brave Admiral, speak and say"*"* — 

He said: '''Sail on! sail on! and on!'''* 

They sailed; they sailed. Then spake the mate: 

" This mad sea shows his teeth to-night. 
He curls his lip, he lies in wait. 

With lifted teeth, as if to bite! 
Brave Admiral, say but one good word: 

What shall we do whe?i hope is goneP" 
The words leapt like a leaping sword: 

^' Sail on! sail on! sail on! and on!^* 



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